glasses off.

It’s a given that whenever a girl actually needs a dress it’s impossible to find one. But then I happened upon these two.  They’re left over from Mayle’s Resort collection, which also means they were a bargain.

I never wear anything normal at these things anyway, but with the right pair of understated heels (black patent?), the gold on cream details and the plunging V in the back should do just fine for even a conservative black tie. Oh, and yes, the real thing is hemmed (slightly) longer than the samples.

And who can resist the dalmatian print for summer!

If your name is Laura Good and you have been waiting for a post on this topic, or if you are interested in how our consumer economy disrespects craft and exploits unrefined sensibilities, not to mention the poor, I haven’t had a lot of time to craft a real post, but you can preview a discussion in comments at Punk Rock Girl.

PS If you haven’t taken the survey yet, help give me a real sample size and TAKE THE SURVEY!

What I’m giving this season:

Kobo Soy Candles at MickMargo.com (or Commerce Street just off 7th in the West Village). They are soy-based, burn 72 hours, and don’t have the health-and-environmental hazards of paraffin, which is a petroleum distillate (if your candles leave a black residue when they burn, you are just breathing in gasoline).

I just ordered ten of of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. I can think of several people who could use the contemplative rest this slim Cather volume brings. Read an earlier rave here.

Pascal Charmolu cookbook Pageholder from the MoMA store. I would rather like one myself, actually. I am always putting less suitable things on top of my cookbooks to hold them open. Rolling pins, for example, which…roll off. I got the idea from Ashley’s bridal kitchen shower registry, in which, if I do say so myself, she included a less pleasing wood stand-up version.

Christmas season, I tend to buy things that remind me of people rather than have a list to check through. I really enjoy matching people to just the right gift, but I don’t come from a gift-giving family. That really leaves the holidays to be about being together, usually around the inevitably communal hotpot. No stressful buying. The way we showed love was always time, service, and food. My mother plying me with groceries and soups drove me batty until I realised that is how she shows love. (So if you ever wonder why I cannot stop feeding people, you know where I get it from.)

The only one who really gets wrapped presents anymore is the kid brother. Brendon is getting nearly a closetful of great sample sale clothes that I collected all year long. Vintage-ish cowboy and plaid shirts (with a few florals to defy that lame logo T-shirt aesthetic that is rampant on college campuses these days), a mustard and blue striped hoodie, cool Barking Irons T-shirts with graphics based on 19th century underground New York. Lucky duck.

Brendon always gets a birthday present, too. This year it was a facsimile and transcript of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. The interior is a wild mess that shows how much anguish goes into Eliot’s writing. Andrea, even before he started writing for El Pais, used to say writing, to which he was addicted, felt like puking to him. He just couldn’t keep it in, but it was painful. I wanted Brendon to value that process early, in this age when words are cheap and can be tawdry.

As for me, aside from the opera on New Year’s Eve, the thing I like best is for my friends to let me gather and feed them. (Okay, and a Pageholder.) So if you get an invitation for the annual New Year’s Day supper, please accept.

So, apparently, I have been informed the new do is actually not that punk rock at all (I have been tucking behind my ears a lot), but if I still think it is, maybe I can adopt this as my new theme song. I am considering it. I kind of really enjoyed the video and rocked out (just a little) in my office.

I watched it after a rather serious one-on-one at the conservative American Entreprise Enterprise Institute, which made me laugh. The juxtaposition, not the meeting. I totally put on a shiny midnight blue suit and switched out my Campers for chocolate croc Oxfords (found in Rome, Fall 2003). I mean, I laced up for it! The meeting, not the video.

Related: Ode to My Campers

In the vein of goes-with-everything shopping, I just snagged these for a song. The navy pebbled leather point wakes up the chocolate brown croc, the gray suede detail tones down the bling, and the sueded sole makes them super comfortable.

Being in bed sick makes for patient internet shopping, I guess. (Yes, I’ve still got that horrid cough and was excoriated for going into the office yesterday to pick up documents!)

Found around the neighborhood:

Devotte riding boots in a smoky clay. They’ll go with every boiled wool, bouclé, quilted, or tweed winter skirt I have, and punch up anything in black, too. I love the pleat detail at the back.

Pudgy hand knit beanie by Mischa Lampert, covers my ears, goes with everything, and I can shove it into my pocket! I adore it and have never had a warmer, more functional hat.

Mouse grey sweater — a little secretary, a little grandpa, super comfortable. I’ve been wearing it every day.

There’s also a quilted black high-waisted skirt from Jane Mayle’s Fall 2007 collection. Believe it or not I don’t own a single other black winter skirt. This one is quilted, completely classic in shape, with a wide, neatly gathered architectural waist and pockets. I’ll have it when I’m 40. I also picked up sweater-grade tights at Erica Tanov on the way to hunting for candles in Nolita.

Those were the five basics I was missing for winter — just in time for the snow that set in yesterday. You’ll see me in all of them a lot this season, I think.

I picked up this vintage Arne Vodder student desk today at Millenium on U street. It’s just what I was seeking, a modest walnut or rich teak desk for an odd nook in my room. It’s pictured below.

GoodEye

I’ve been waiting years and years to buy a desk. Richard knocked off 20% of the sticker because of a rear leg that needs to be repositioned. The hinged drop leaf can be raised into position by simply sliding the top over, but it also lifts right off. And, the 3 drawer cabinet can slide and be positioned on either side of the desk. I am really a sucker for modular design.

I went with a green Dupioni silk, similar, but richer, deeper, and somehow brighter, than the original reupholstery. I trekked all over the textile district looking for something else and finally settled on the green when I showed the swatch to the guy at Mood. When I took the swatch out, he reached for it, asked where I’d found it, and told me not to bother looking further. As it so happens, it’s a Knoll fabric at some ridiculous price that makes me think it fell off the back of a truck.

I rang Jack (a Moroccan French American prone to saying, “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I get!”) right away. He said he thought he’d hear from me again, had set the bolt aside, and when I asked whether he could give me a break, dropped the price by $3/yard.

Later at Jack’s shop in Chinatown, we both agreed I would have tired of lemon beads from Hable. I’d love a pillow for the chair in that mustard yellow, though. I also thought of some contrasting piping but I decided traditional instead of kooky would be better for this chair. Any chair can be kooky with the right fabric. This chair has beautiful classic lines that should be respected.

Some years ago, I picked up a chair for a song at the Chelsea outdoor flea market (before it was overrun by high-end condos). It had great bones, rounded walnut arms and legs, and its original upholstery — a perfect kelly green dupioni backed silk that popped, and went with just about everything. One day a large tear appeared, and then a few weeks later, the bottom fell out. I let it sit mournfully in a corner for over a year. Now here I am, unable to find a similar chair I like that I can afford anywhere, and picking out fabrics for the reupholsterer (very reasonable quote from these folks in Brooklyn — will report back).

I prefer fabrics I won’t tire of over time, so am tempted to go with something more sober (I was thinking of a chocolate brown polka dot on navy). But wouldn’t any of these be fun?

I love the lines on my new chair (ebay, of course). I’ve tried to break up the mid-century modern vibe in my apartment, but this was hard to resist.

It will go right next to the screen door. The black vinyl should punch things up a bit. Steve says it might cut the whimsical feel of the room, but I’m okay with that. It was starting to feel slouchy around here.

Katie worked on this house (slide show), featured in the NYTimes Magazine yesterday. The house is lined with a corrugated, perforated steel mesh to let in light at a rate of 50%. Beautiful, no?

Anthony Cotsifas

A girl after my very own heart. A Dress A Day on What to Wear on Airplanes:

For years, and I mean YEARS, of pretty much monthly travel, I’ve been boggled at what people decide is appropriate to wear on airplanes. Just absolutely boggled. The sweatpants and the stiletto mules (often on the same person), the jeans that are more holes than jeans (with matching holey t-shirts), the ratty flip-flops, the micro-minis. I could never figure it out, until last night, while waiting for the red-eye home to Chicago from SFO, I had a little epiphany, or perhaps a little interlude of sleep-deprivation. (So hard to tell the difference, really.)

Read the rest.

The historic Lipscani neighborhood is pedestrian only. We figured out why when we saw it:

There must have been about a dozen bridal shops on this street. Later we asked whether there was a surge of weddings in Bucharest and learned Lipscani is considered a particular district for those shops, which was, frankly, a relief. The dresses were all very…voluminous.

I couldn’t resist taking this picture just because of the evidence of habitation in the top floor:

Despite learning all about Romanian customs and dress at the Peasant Museum, where I picked up these adorable dolls:

Romanian interior life remains a mystery to me:

But in case you get the wrong idea about Bucharest, also in Lipscani off a side street is Market B, a design shop/cafe. The armchair cost €2725 (about $3400). That is Susan in the mirror:

The old and the new, like in so much of Eastern Europe, butt up against each other quite literally:

Capitalism is everywhere, and that means advertising:

Do you see the funny impaled thing to the left? It sits in Revolution Plaza. We thought it was an olive. But our tour guide said when we asked what it represented, “That is what we are all wondering, 22 million people are wondering what it is. We call it a potato.”

(With only one free day, we tried to take a train to the country and a walk around town but everything appears impossible here. The hotel tried to tell us, “There are no trains, and the buses are not safe. They are very crowded, and they go too fast. ” I really think they believe Americans are just wimps and cannot handle anything. I have sat in the back of a delipidated Matatu thinking my mother would kill me if I died in Kenya and practically walked from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro without so much as asking why the bus wasn’t continuing. I can handle a crowded bus in Romania. Anyway, with short time we resorted to a hired guide, and I started to look forward to my first experience on an awful huge tour bus. It turned out it was us, a very young driver, and an extremely well-informed tour guide in a black Audi for 3 hours and €30 each.)

Speaking of Revolutionary Plaza, here is the balcony where Ceaucescu told the people that the Communist era was Romania’s golden age — right before the Army joined the people, toppled the government, tried him, and executed him by firing sqad:

This Romanian car (the first model, someone said), is the legacy he left. I just love that it has a flat tire. I have no idea why it was just sitting there:

I asked nearly every Englishspeaking Romanian I met how they felt about joining the EU earlier this year. A former professional footballer said they worked a long time for this, but he didn’t “think it was such a good thing because with the Euro now everything is much more expensive.” Ioanna said she wasn’t sure yet because changes like the agricultural regulations would affect daily life; “Our food right now has no preservatives and when the agricultural laws go into force, all our farming methods will have to change to meet European standards.” A freshman at university said he thought it was great because now there weren’t any visas to travel; when asked where he wanted to live, he said, “Everywhere!”

A walk in Gradina Cismigiu park right in the center of the city reminded me that daily life in Bucharest is not all about politics. It’s the same everywhere, really. People were enjoying lovely weather,

with cotton candy:

and drinking fountains:

There were young on bungi swings:

old playing a universal game:

and an orchestra playing Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time”!:

Swing was better, and they were actually quite good.

I was starting to be nostalgic for 1949 in Paris. Bucharest is actually a lot like Paris in a number of haunted ways that somehow survived Communism. Aristocrats sent their children to study in Paris, and many of those people brought the sensibility back with them.

A surreal stay wouldn’t be as surreal without being trapped in an Orthodox church, built in 1724:

We weren’t being holy. We were just impeded by a hailstorm:

A morning cab ride started with a lesson in sports humility and ended with the Queen’s hats (she is here visiting Jamestown).

Getty Images

To picture this properly you kind of have to see in your mind an old black driver, friendly, dignified, and with a nice, slow, Detroit drawl (well, I assume it was a Detroit drawl because that is where he is from, but he also spent 5 years in Japan while in the Army).

For some reason the cab driver asked whether I can swim (I really don’t recall what lead us there, it was prefaced by his laughing at my using the word “colleague.”). I thought of passing with some effort the swim test for my scuba diving license, and said, “I’m not very good, but I can swim.” He chuckled and said, “All you had to say was ‘I like water but I can’t swim!’”

Then he said, “You know what I like? The Queen. She wears some meeean hats. She wears a different one every time I see her on TV.” I asked whether he had ever met her in person. He had not.

“Now see, you look more like the fashion designer type. Do you like fashion?”

“Yes, I do, but I’m not a fashion designer.”

“You wear clothes very well. You look like you like thinking about fashion and nothing else.”

I didn’t know how to feel about this. I will admit that despite its being a Friday (a cause for jeans and special snacks in the office), I am wearing a short white metallic linen 3/4 sleeve dress from Maje in Paris and high peep-toe heels today. It was just too beautiful out to wear a boring ole suit. It was kind of nice, actually, to be known for fashion instead of for an obsession with religious freedom for just a few minutes today.

Our ride ended at the City Club, where I was going to breakfast with Kristina and a Cuban dissident (linked: Armando Valladares’ testimony as a later Ambassador to the UN on the subject of torture. After he gave that speech another delegate came up to him and said, “Mr. Valladares, you are not a diplomat. You are a poet.” Happy reading.)

Three Eva Zeisel pieces from her Tomorrow’s Classic design, including this pitcher. She is an industrial designer and is today still making pottery at the age of 100. NPR story.

You can find reproductions of her Classic Century pieces in white at Crate and Barrel. About bidding, I will say only that I got the pieces for less than what the reproductions currently cost. I use a vase as a pitcher (and a Corning Ware pot as a tea kettle!) because until now I haven’t found a water pitcher or tea kettle that I really wanted, so I’m rather pleased with my small coup. Now I’m looking for a good stovetop tea kettle.